#mark merlis

[mi-estas-birdo]

Do you remember? Loitering outside the disco, finally making yourself go in. You paid your three bucks to an improbably muscular man who looked at you with incurious disdain, got in return a little ticket good for one drink, then turned a corner and beheld: HUNDREDS OF US, under the flashing lights. Sometimes it can seem as though all the repression was almost worth it, because it made possible that explosive discovery: hundreds of us, in the disco, free, and you had turned a corner and were one of them.

An Arrow's Flight, or Pyrrhus, by Mark Merlis, Pg. 319

[gracchisuggestions]

Talk on my dash about the erasure of classical homoeroticism reminded me of the gay retelling of Philoctetes where Philoctetes is afflicted with an HIV metaphor and Troy survives because no Deus Ex Machina Heracles shows up, so he elopes with ex-stripper Pyrrhus.

Well, that wasn’t the part I was reminded of. Rather, I was reminded of how Admetus was a member of the supporting cast, immortality and all, and the idea of anything sexual between him and Apollo was flat-out dismissed. Also, Achilles was the personification of militant straight masculinity, the Formidable Father Figure, and absolutely never ever cross-dressed. This despite the author knowing about ye olde Patrochilles vs Achilloclus shipwars. I enjoyed the read in other respects but found these writing choices somewhat confusing.

[gaylitreview]

【Man about Town】by Mark Merlis

Rating: 4/5

Medium length gay fiction (372 pages). Joel Lingeman is a forty-five-year old congressional adviser. After a lengthy career within the Office of Legislative Analysis (OLA), Joel has reached his terminal position specializing in Medicare hospital reimbursement. When Sam, his partner of 15 years left him for someone else, Joel was partially glad to have his personal space back and was geniunely puzzled that the relationship had lasted as long as it did. Naturally Joel went back to the bar scene, but he had neither the skill nor appearance to attract potential suitors in a room full of topless twenty-something. Feeling defeated, Joel went home alone. As he sat in the living room, Joel recalled a swimsuit ad he saw during his youth and was suddenly inspired to find out what has become the model in the ad.

A witty and compelling read. The book followed Joel through his daily routines over the course of a few months after his breakup with Sam. Through Joel’s eyes, the readers get a humorous first-hand view of how democracy works (or doesn’t work). For the most part, Joel is neither happy nor unhappy with life. When he had time, he pondered the meaning of life and existence. As for whether he was able to find any answer by the end of the book, that is entirely up to interpretation.

Available on kindle for $7.99

[onebluebookworm]

30 Days of Literary Pride 2024 - June 15

American Studies - Mark Merlis

[houseoforange]

But that's what people were here for, the only reason we were on the planet at all: so that a star that flared and died a billion years before we were born would not pass away unobserved.

p. 359, Man About Town by Mark Merlis

[houseoforange]

[M]ost of civilization consists of lies about the dead.

p. 183, Man About Town by Mark Merlis

[houseoforange]

Here was the truth: because Joel did not believe in Paradise, an eternal life, he was left believing in New Mexico. To be there with the Santa Fe boy, swimming, lounging, cruising forever. Just dwelling with him, as so many people have dreamt of a timeless dwelling with the altogether less attractive and unsmiling deity they have conjured up. Joel at least had incontrovertible evidence that the Santa Fe boy existed. Or that he had existed once. More than anyone could say about Jesus. For an eternity they would wash his Mustang, each of them wearing his little lo-rise trunks, then take a dip in the pool to cool off, pop a couple of brews and lie in the sun. They wouldn't touch. But he would look over at Joel from his chaise longue, raise his hips and adjust his wet trunks, lie back. Still looking at Joel, that sad impenetrable smile dawning on his face. Joel would smile back. They would not touch. For ever, Joel would live in that moment that was so much more intense than mere touching, that instant when you knew you were going to touch. Through aeons he would be with Him in Santa Fe and would be about to touch Him. Santa Fe. Holy faith.

p. 182, Man About Town by Mark Merlis

[cassphos]

They were lawless. Of course they obeyed most rules: they never jumped a turnstile or ran a red light or spat on the sidewalk; they seldom shoplifted and then only as a lark, never anything of value; they showed up for jury duty. But they were lawless in the manner of heroes. They sailed west without a chart, beneath night skies with unnamed constellations. They plummeted off the edge or found safe harbors that they claimed for all of us. They did it for everyone who had come before them. The Eronauts lived out their freedom for all the generations that had been caged, so that every impulse was a holy obligation. They did it for everyone who came after. And, a league ahead of the pathfinders, Philoctetes.

Now the sea lanes they charted have closed behind them. All they discovered, that had waited since the dawn of time to be found, swallowed up. No one will ever go that way again, not even if the cure is found. Partly because we will never own our bodies again, as they did. We are vectors now, or vessels, sources of transmission; our bodies belong to the unseen. Well, it has always been so, we have always belonged to the Fates. We just never thought the Fates were so tiny.

- From An Arrow’s Flight, by Mark Merlis